Session 2: Communication
Barriers & Roadblocks

In this segment Don Baughman explains that barriers and roadblocks to healthy communications can be grouped under three major categories: 

  • Judging

    • Criticizing

    • Name-calling

    • Diagnosing

    • Praising evaluatively

  • Sending solutions

    • Ordering

    • Threatening

    • Moralizing

    • Excessive/Inappropriate questioning

  • Avoiding the other's concerns

    • Diverting

    • Logical argument

    • Reassuring

Using these “techniques” will block open and honest communication and sharing. When one uses any of the above it increases emotional distance and defensiveness. It prevents cooperative, collaborative effort, and it triggers resistance and resentment.

One might do these things with the best in intentions but they really are attempts to control the other person.

Introduction to Communication Barriers & Roadblocks

11 minutes 53 seconds. Don Baughman explains that one effective way to improve communication is to just stop doing the negative stuff.

Judging

13 minutes 53 seconds. Don Baughman explains the four (4) ways to do judging:

  • Criticizing: looking at what's wrong with the other person, rather than what is right with them.

  • Name calling: by calling someone a name you put them in a negative box and then you stop trying to learn more about who they truly are.

  • Diagnosing: you analyze the person's intent or motivation, even though you really don't know them.

  • Praising evaluatively: the hidden message when you praise evaluatively is that if I can evaluate you positively I can also evaluate you negatively.

Sending Solutions

14 minutes 54 seconds. Don explains the four ways of sending someone solutions to their problems.

When you send solutions you may be intending to be helpful, but the impact on the other person is you are accidentally telling them they are not smart enough or competent enough to solve their own problems and find their own answers.

  • Ordering: Here you just are telling the other person what they have to do.

  • Threatening: This is where you send the solution but you try to induce a little fear in the other person

  • Moralizing: This is where you send a solution and wrap a halo around it. You have the superior solution and you are willing to your superior solution.

  • Excessive/inappropriate questioning: You keep asking questions to lead the other person in the direction you want the to do; to your “right answer.”

Avoiding the Other's Concern

5 minutes 14 seconds. Don explains the three ways people cone avoid dealing with others’s concerns.

  • Diverting: Of this is done by using humor or by bringing the conversation back to you.

  • Logical argument: Instead of dealing with the other person’s emotions this technique turns it into a logical, rational, objective statement.

  • Reassuring: This is when dealing with emotions makes the other person uncomfortable so they try to talk them out of it, such as saying, “It’s going to be ok.” T

Exploring Questions

16 minutes 43 seconds. Don explains why it is important to be aware of what you are doing so you have the possibility of doing something different. Rather than reacting to something as though you were on automatic pilot (such as when something “trips your trigger” and you have a knee-jerk response because of your life story), be aware that you are reacting strongly to something so you can choose to do something different. As he says, I’m not asking you to stop that behavior, I’m asking you do it with awareness.